Father kills three-year-old daughter in sickening act of revenge
It was the most sickening and crulest of crimes. What happened to Relle Darjon is beyond comprehension. In November last year, her aranged partner kidnapped their three-year-old daughter, Yasmina. For 4 hours, he tormented Relle with phone calls and texts. Then he did the unthinkable.
Now, as Raman Aar begins a new life behind bars, Relle tells her harrowing story for the first time. Port Phillip Prison in Melbourne is a place full of evil. But among the 800 criminals who call it home, one stands out. 24year-old Raman Aar is as cruel and violent a piece of work as there is. [Music] Victoria got rid of the death penalty in 1975, but when you hear what Akar did to his own three-year-old daughter as a way of wreaking revenge on his ex- fiance, you may well be wishing it was never abolished.
He makes me sick, sick to my stomach. And I hate him. I hate him. And I will never ever forgive him. Ever. Ever. forever. Ever. Like most toddlers, Yasmina Darjon didn’t have a care in the world. I think her eyes her eyes were the best thing. Just she just had to look at me and it made everything all better. Yeah.
Mom Relle says her Mimi was a cheeky showoff who’d love to dance and sing. But late last year, Yasmina was brutally murdered by her own father. This was one of my favorite songs with Mim. Now her crackly recording on an iPhone is the only way Relle can hear her daughter’s voice. You make me happy. He made me told you Mrs.
Relle met Raman Aar when they were both just 15. They began a relationship a few months later but almost from the start he was obsessive, possessive and violent. The first 8 months was okay and that’s when things got bad after that. And what sort of form did that violence take? We were out one time and he seemed to have a problem um with me for something or other and he hit me pretty much like a man and then I fell straight to the floor and he spat on my face.
So his temper just all of a sudden just came out and he showed me the real him. He in his in his exact words he said, “This is the real me. Now you know who the man is.” Violence became the daily norm in the relationship. And the more Aar battered Relle, the less she could do about it. Why did you stay with him? I thought he would change.
I’ll be different next time. I’ll get help. I’ll change. I won’t do it. Forgive me. This is not me. I only do it cuz I love you. But every time he hits you, you must have got the idea then. I didn’t. It didn’t. You must look back now and and think I was stupid. Definitely young, dumb, and stupid. Yasmina. In early 2007, Relle fell pregnant.
Yasmina was born in November. Relle persevered in the relationship. She even agreed to marry Akar. But not even that stopped him hitting her. Finally, in May of last year, Michelle couldn’t take the pain any longer. She ended the relationship, but Akar wouldn’t take no for an answer, kept on harassing her.
So, in September, she went to court to make him stay away, but he breached that order, too, a staggering 27 times in 3 months. I wanted a better life for me and my daughter, and I put my foot down. Every time he tried to contact me, he messaged me. He turned up at my house, I always went to the police. I did the right thing. And the police didn’t act once.
They pulled him into the police station or, you know, they went and got him or something. They interviewed him and then that was it. Like the police, Relle was powerless to keep him away. A car’s 28th breach was inevitable. [Music] You knew what he was capable of with his fists. Yep. And yet you left your daughter in his care.
Help me to understand that he was never like that towards his daughter. Ever. Ever. Ever. Ever. Um he held her in the air like a jewel. And what could I do at the end of the day? That’s that’s her dad. As much as I hate to say it, I hate it. But it was her father. It was Wednesday, November 17 last year, just after 6 p.m.
Relle and Yasmina arrive home to find Ramisan Aar waiting for them in that driveway. Doesn’t seem to matter to him that he’s breaching a court order to stay away. He does that whenever he likes. But little Yasmina was absolutely thrilled to see her dad. And playing on that affection, Aar seized his chance. I’ll never forget that face that she just um she just she was so happy to see him.
She was so happy. And um yeah, even though Akar was breaking the law by being there, Relle once again fell for his promises. This time that he was just taking Yasmina to buy a chocolate. You watched them go. I watched them go. Watched him turn the corner and I He was going in the direction of the milk bar. And you thought he’d be back in 10 minutes? Not even.
So, how how long was he gone before you thought uh this is not quite right? 10 minutes. Where are you? You’re supposed to be back by now. At first, there were excuses. Relle thought a car was just being a pest, but she called the police anyway. They told her to keep talking to him. How does it feel not to have your child when I didn’t have mine for 3 months? Just bring her back, please.
As late afternoon turned to night, Aar’s mood also darkened. And an hour after he’d taken Yasmina, this ominous conversation. Payback’s a [ __ ] How does it feel? Please. Please, Ramsay, bring her back. Just bring my daughter back. Guess what, baby? You’re not getting her back. You were getting desperate by this time.
Yeah. And I said, you know, look, just bring her back. We’ll work things out, whatever, you know, whatever you want. I’m I’m ready to do it, okay? Blah, blah, blah. And he told me, it’s too late now. It’s too late. Relle didn’t know it at the time, but Aar was enjoying his cruel game so much he wanted everyone to know.
Through his mobile phone, he updated his Facebook page with the brutal warning, “About to kill my kid.” And a few minutes later, his simple reason, payback. So, he was posting those messages for his friends to see, for attention. He was nothing but an attention seeker. He’s always been like that. The whole thing appears to be a almost a staged set of events that he set out to to do.
Is that the way you see it? Yep. Yep. And do so he had this sick plan to to make you suffer. Mhm. [Music] Put yourself in Relle’s place. What she was already going through must have been the most terrible torture imaginable for a mother. But it got even worse. 2 hours after Yasmina was taken, there was another harrowing phone call.
Bring her back. It’s too late. I’m going to do it. He told her, he said, “Tell tell mommy you love her.” And she said, “I love you, Mommy.” Did you get a chance to say anything to her? I told her I loved her, too. And that was it. Mhm. And then he hung up and he Yeah. Did you think then, Michelle, that he was going to go through with it? A part of me did and a part of me didn’t.
I thought he was just doing it to stir me around. Stir me up. You know, he liked to do that a lot. At 8:47 about 10 minutes later. Mhm. He’s on the phone again. He says, “I’ve killed her.” She’s just lying there next to me. Doesn’t matter anymore. Please. I killed her, man. I KILLED HER. I KILLED HER BECAUSE OF YOU.
OH, I don’t care. Even if I go behind bars, I know that you’re suffering. I still remember everything that he said. everything to every detail that he told me, you know, and I didn’t believe it. I didn’t go she’s in heaven now, you know. And I just said just bring that’s all I kept saying all night was just bring her back.
Just bring her back. But he didn’t bring her back. He stabbed Yasmina to death, dumped her body, and tried to cover up his crime. Seven long hours after Relle waved Yasmina goodbye, the police delivered the worst news. And they said, “We’ve arrested him.” And I said, “Where where’s Mimi?” The longest pause I’ve ever heard in my life. And he said, “We found her.
She’s dead. We found her in a park.” I couldn’t I couldn’t hear. I couldn’t see. I couldn’t breathe. And I just screamed. And I could That’s all I could do. What’s staggering about Aar is he is still not remorseful about killing his own child. How do we explain that? There’s a generous explanation and a less generous.
The generous explanation is that you’ve done something so terrible uh that you can’t even really look at it clearly. You could never even begin to think about what have I done. What’s the less generous? Uh the less generous is uh that this person had so little concern for other human beings even its own their own children that they were capable of doing this.
Does that make him evil? Makes him brutal and dangerous. Forensic psychiatrist Paul Mullen says what Ramisan Akar did is still a relatively rare crime. But Aar now joins a list of infamous fathers who’ve killed their kids as a way of getting back at their ex partners. Men like Arthur Freeman, who threw his daughter Darcy off Melbourne’s Westgate Bridge, and Robert Farquson, who drove his three sons into a dam and left them to drown.
Do they see it as an act of revenge? I think some of them do. Yes. and they justify it, you know, as if uh this was the right thing to do. How can it be an act of revenge if that child is a part of them too? Oh, I think the difficulty of course I is that the children become less important than the battle and struggle for custody or control uh with the partner.
So the victory is everything. Absolutely. And damn the child in the process. I think they just lose sight uh of the child as anything other uh than the prize in some kind of ongoing battle uh with an exartner. Relle will never be able to make sense of what Aar did to Yasmina. I brought you a mirror. Steal your shiny one.
That’s unbelievable. But finally, last Friday, 7 months on from the murder, a resolution of sorts. A car was sentenced to spend the rest of his life in prison. And there’s no chance of parole before 2004. I want him to suffer every day in there. I hope he’s there’s a reminder every day. Every day.
I hope Yasmina haunts him every night. every night. I do. Does a part of you still wish there was a death penalty? Yes. Yes. A big part of me I do. I know this seems like a screamingly obvious question, but um why do you think he did it? There was only one thing left that could hurt me, and that was him taking her away from me.
Not for an hour, for a day, but forever. You must ru the day that you ever met him. I do sometimes, but then at the same time, I think, you know, I wouldn’t have had Mim just my life, my sister, my friend, my everything. Coming up. She gave me a whole new purpose to be a dad. Australian parents caught up. How that is in the best interest of children, I’m not too sure.
In a Japanese nightmare. Such a irrational rule. Will they ever be allowed the worst experience of my life to see their kids again? It’s extremely frustrating. That’s next on 60 Minutes.
